


Give me a stone heart

by Defira



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Asexual Character, Gen, tokophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defira/pseuds/Defira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>*Warning for canon typical violence against women*</p>
<p>Meliana Tabris knows that she is different, and knows that she will have to make sacrifices because of those differences- the life of an elf is never easy, and even less so when the few securities available to you rouse panic and terror in your heart. </p>
<p>Written for Asexual Awareness Week</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give me a stone heart

“Blessed Maker, turn me to stone,” she whispered, blood in her mouth from biting her lip too hard. “Blessed Andraste, take pity on your daughter.”

She crouched down in the darkness, eyes held tightly shut, fighting the urge to rock back and forth in a panic. There were shouts outside, and each call of her name made her cringe a little further into the shade.

“Blessed Maker, turn me to stone.”

Her knuckles burned, her whole arm ached; she hadn’t ever realised how hard it was to punch someone. Panic had lent her strength in the moment, fear had guided her actions, but she was paying for it now. 

“Blessed Andraste, take pity on your daughter.”

Her mother had shown her knives, had shown her the best place to drive a blade between a man’s ribs. But her mother was cold in the ground, gone five years now, and her blades had not stopped the men who took offense at a knife eared bitch with a knife. 

“Meliana?”

She flinched down further, trying to collapse into herself, trying to wish herself into a stone. The voice was familiar- of course it was familiar, they were all familiar, they were all crammed one on top of the other in this wretched pit, a family to a room, a dozen to a house, family and cousins and friends and too many people too close and-

“Meliana.” A hand landed on her shoulder, the voice sad and pitying, and she reeled backwards, limbs flailing, panic choking her as surely as cold shem fingers around her neck. “Dear one, it’s alright- I’m here, don’t cry.”

The voice, calm and sad and familiar, cut through the worst of her fear and she swallowed down the sob that was bubbling up in her throat. “Papa,” she whispered, reaching up hesitantly to touch his hand, to ensure it was him, to ensure she was safe. He let her entwine her fingers with his, painfully tight, a fierce strength in her that her frail frame belied. 

He was crouched before her, her dear father Cyrion, protector and shield against the harsher world. “Mel, my dear little one, what are you doing here?”

_Here_ was the ruined frame of a collapsed shanty apartment house- it had caught fire a few months ago, one of the families in the upper storeys leaving a candle burning during the night to soothe the fears of a little one. Nearly forty people had died in the blaze, and the skeletal remains of the building still sat squished between the other tenements, the wood slowly rotting in the damp of the Ferelden winter. She was hiding in the crook of a wall and a roof beam, hidden from the wind by the crumbling stone, hidden from sight by the slimy flaking wood of the beam. 

“I needed to hide.”

“But here, Mel? You’re not safe here- what in all the lands could be so bad that you need to hide down in here?”

She hesitated, shame and loathing and confusion swimming in her. “Daris kissed me,” she whispered, a string of blood escaping from her lip and dribbling down her chin. 

Her father’s expression was mournful, weary; the weariness she knew, for he had worn it since her mother’s death, but the grief was new. There was confusion in his eyes, and helplessness. 

_At least in this I am not alone._

“Did he hurt you?” he asked gently, leaning forward and wiping away the blood. 

She shook her head frantically. “I punched him,” she whispered, trying to swallow the bitter copper taste in her mouth; was it blood or shame? 

He was silent, his fingers tracing the little scar on her chin- from where she’d fallen from the branches of the vhenadahl as a wee thing- and running up to her hair. She relaxed marginally as he stroked her wild curls away from her face, comforted by his touch.

“Did you not want him to kiss you?”

“ _Never_ , never ever,” she hissed, frightened by the vehemence in her at the thought, frightened by the very thought of it. She had never been more certain of anything in her life. “I didn’t w-want him to kiss me, and I d-didn’t say he could touch-”

Her hands were balled into fists so tight that her fingernails cut into her palms; her throat was closing fast, choking her with panic and anger and the frantic need to explain that she liked Daris well enough and sometimes he made her laugh but the look in his eyes made her feel awkward and frightened and the way he stood too close sometimes made her skin crawl but he hadn’t done anything wrong and-

“Meliana.” Her father took her hands in his, gently loosening her fingers, carefully taking a moment to wipe away the little spots of blood that had bloomed on her dark skin. “My dear little one.”

She raised tear filled eyes to his, jaw set resolutely even as her lip trembled. “I don’t _want_ it.” 

Cyrion held her gaze, grief and sadness swimming in his eyes; he finally sighed, and stood from his crouch with a grunt of discomfort. He lifted her as he stood, pulling her up into his arms, little limbs far too thin wrapping around him as he carried her from the ruined building. She buried her face in the curve of his neck, hiding her tears and her frustration and her shame from those who would gawk and stare.

“You do not need to want it, my dear little one.”  
___

The death of a mother was a fact of life in the alienage. Malnutrition and limited access to medicinal assistance saw an astonishingly high number of mother and infant deaths, no matter how fiercely the families all pulled together to support the pregnant women. There were always new little bonfires out by the city wall- no fancy pyres and ceremonies for the faithful down in the gutter-, mother and child burned together to spare the kindling.

Waste not, want not, or so the shems had a fancy for saying. 

Meliana was too small to be much good as a servant, too frail and far too timid to risk leaving the grounds of the alienage and venturing out into the city to work in the halls of the fancy shem ladies and lords. She’d only be cleaning out the shit pots anyway, so it wasn’t much of a life to mourn, but it would have meant a little more money for them, something to make their food stretch a little further when the city guard cracked down and the curfews and the rations became a way of life again. 

Someone had suggested that maybe she’d do well to help the midwife- learn the trade, learn how to make the best of what meagre herbs could be grown in the overtaxed muddy ground. For a time it seemed like an ideal solution, because she quite liked children, and babies, and in general it meant she wasn’t loitering in the streets as often- less chance of running afoul of patrolling soldiers or bored noblemen. 

She didn’t precisely _like_ it- the blood and the screaming- but it was something. She fetched the clean rags and washed the tools and ran to the elder with news of the birth; the midwife said she had an eye for herbs, and never said a word whenever she added a little bit of raw sugar, or honey. 

And if Meliana had the chance to lick the excess honey from her hands when no one was looking, well- all the better. 

But then there was the night that Kalea Dwellayan felt the pains far too early- months too early, her panicked sobs not eased by at all by the concoctions that Meliana frantically brewed. As the hours trickled past, and Kalea’s strength oozed from her with her lifeblood, as the babe showed no sign of emerging and easing her torment. 

Each scream etched a permanent mark on her heart, the blood and the gore staining her skin and her soul. She couldn’t calm Kalea’s screams, couldn’t soothe the pain or the panic for what was coming. 

The death of a mother was a fact of life in the alienage. But for Meliana, crying in horror in the hours before dawn as she tried to wash the blood and the memory from her hands, it was a fact she wished she had not ever learned. 

_______

Marriage meant she would be safe. Marriage meant she would have a home, and a future, in the years to come when her father passed into the waiting arms of the Maker. Marriage meant she would have protection, and someone to watch over her.

She tried not to cry as she fastened the buttons on the gown with fumbling fingers- it would not do to go to her own wedding with swollen red eyes. She tried to ignore the way her skin crawled at Shianni’s gentle teasing, tried not to think of all the things that being a wife would entail. She tried not to flinch when her betrothed took her hand in his in greeting. 

She feared that she would spend her life trying to be something she was not.

______

“Blessed Maker, turn me to stone.” The whispered prayer was not her own, though she could just have easily voiced it. “Oh cousin, please, let me go home.”

Meliana knelt by her dear cousin, hands shaking as she reached for Shianni. She didn’t blame her when Shianni flinched away from her at the sight of the blood on her, but she understood the way her cousin cringed and cried quietly as she stroked her back and kissed the top of her head. 

She felt like a monster for the immense gratitude she felt that it had not been her. The Maker had heard her prayers, and turned her heart to stone. 

There were no guards left to harass them as they limped their way from the grounds of the estate, a bloodied and bruised and sorry collection of elves scurrying through the pre-dawn murk on their way back to their hovels. Meliana led the group, the knives held so tightly in her fists that her hands were aching.

Everything ached, actually. Everything except her heart. 

They had just stumbled down the steps and into the alienage when the bells began to toll in the distance. Her crimes had been uncovered, and they would come for her soon; Shianni was crying softly into Soris’ shoulder, and the other women let out small whimpers of fear. Meliana’s jaw tightened, her fingers curling tighter around the knife hilts. 

There was a small group waiting by the city gate, and for a moment anger boiled in her veins like acid, thin and hot, as she took in the much larger shape of a shem beside two more familiar figures. But then she remembered the Warden shem, the friend of the Elder, and the man who had helped Soris to find them...

He had not the inclination to help himself, though. Her lip curled as she spied him, cataloguing a list of the deaths she had caused this night and the pain he could have prevented if only he’d taken up arms and helped them.

But when had a shem ever done anything to help someone like her? 

Cyrion ran to her, arms going around her without hesitation, despite the gore that coated her. “My dear little one,” he whispered, his voice shaking as he held her fiercely. “You are-”

“Fine,” she said dully, well aware of how coldly monotonous her voice was. Cyrion reeled back, frantic concern in his eyes as he stooped to meet her gaze, searching desperately for something in her face.

She saw the moment his heart broke, when he realised that whatever he was hoping to see in her had died back in the doglord’s estate.

Valendrian was talking, saying something to the group, but Meliana couldn’t concentrate on his words. She was tired, so very tired, and the guards would come for her soon. 

“We can’t hide them for a crime of this magnitude,” someone was saying. “They’ll tear the alienage apart to find them! People will die, children will die, and-”

“People have already died,” she said softly, voice dead, “and the shems will not pay for their crime.”

Her words fell on an awkward silence, and there was murmured conversation a moment later about Shianni- Soris took her away, to bathe and to sleep. It occurred to Meliana far too late that she really should be taking herbs as well, to prevent disease and to make sure her womb didn’t quicken with the doglord’s brat. Someone else would have to remember to give them to her. 

“They are coming,” Cyrion said urgently, and she did not need to ask whom. “We need to hide her-” 

“Duncan,” Valendrian said quickly, “please, you see more than ever how urgent the situation is. You must-”

“The wardens are a neutral organisation, Valendrian- we do not interfere in local disputes.”

“We all know what happens to young elf women who get taken away by the guard,” Valendrian said, his hand on Meliana’s shoulder. Meliana didn’t really need a reminder of what happened to young elf women who were taken away, and her skin crawled in horror. “Duncan, please, I’m begging you- for the sake of our friendship, _please_ -” 

The warden looked pained- she couldn’t say she blamed him. The wardens were a legendary group, brutal and heroic and romantic. She was a gangly fifteen year old elf girl, far too thin and far too small. She was not a hero. “The life of a Grey Warden is not easy,” Duncan said softly, his eyes meeting hers, “and I cannot guarantee her safety. But I assure you, I will do my best to ensure that she will come to no harm while she is under my command.”

“Do I get a say in the matter at all?” Meliana asked, far more bold than she had ever been before, speaking freely in front of so many men. 

Valendrian’s fingers dug into her shoulder. “Child, you must realise what will happen to you if you stay.”

Duncan came forward, his expression serious. Out of all of them, she felt that perhaps he had the greatest understanding of the precipice she stood upon, and the cold violence in her heart. “It is not an easy life, child,” he said gently, “but it is rewarding. You must leave your home, your family, and give your all in the protection of the people of this world.”

She stared at the ground, feeling tears burning in her eyes that she did not want to acknowledge. “And I won’t have to get married,” she asked, less of a question and more of a statement. It would have left her hopeful once, deliriously happy at the thought of such an easy escape, but now she was just tired.

“There are no stipulations that wardens may not marry, but many choose not-”

“I choose not,” she said instantly, sharply, the knives held tightly in her hands. Her mother had shown her knives, and told her heroic tales before bedtime. She was not a hero, and she had no desire to be a hero- she just wanted to be left alone, never again forced to compromise herself for the sake of security, never again trapped into sacrificing her comfort for the sake of her future. “I choose the wardens.”

The sounds of the guards drew closer; Duncan sighed wearily, glancing over his shoulder at their approach. “Well, in that case- welcome to the Grey Wardens, Meliana.”


End file.
